WORKSHOP AGENDA] ] ] ] ] ] ] WORKSHOP CONCLUSIONS ] ] ] ] ] ] ]PRESENTATIONS

A workshop on "Forestry & Climate Change- Assessing Mitigation Potential: Lessons Learned" was organized on September 23 and 24, 2002, at India International Centre, New Delhi, by the Indian Council for Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore under the sponsorship of U. S Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) & LBNL, USA.

The main goal of the workshop was to:

1. Create awareness among different stakeholders on climate change-forest sector mitigation and project opportunities
2. Discuss issues related to the GHG accounting of forest sector projects: permanence, additionality, leakage, verification etc.
3. Discuss methods, tools, and techniques for assessing forest sector mitigation potential, costs
4. Understand the forest sector mitigation potential, costs and benefits in India
5. Learn from the experience of other developing countries in addressing climate change mitigation in forest sector (India, Indonesia, Philippines etc.)
6. Discuss afforestation, reforestation, deforestation, additional activities & project activities.
7. Explore future areas for collaboration on research, forest sector case study development and methods for addressing key GHG accounting issues

A network, FORCLIMIT (Forestry and Climate Change Mitigation Network) has been formed which is addressing issues on Climate Change especially from the developing country’s perspective. Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines are part of the network. The main objective of the network is to assist LULUCF inventory improvement with regard to data and methods; assess options for forest maintenance, expansion, & improved management, & GHG benefits; have dialogue among government, private, NGO, experts and prepare case studies with regard to technical, financial, rural livelihood, sustainable development aspects from view point of climate change.

This workshop was an initative to be part of the network and conduct similar studies.

The workshop focussed on identifying priority areas for research cooperation between India and FORCLIMIT, establish working groups, schedule set of activities such as research, workshops and information dissemination for the next two years, seek stakeholders input especially from private sector in India in order to identify their needs, questions, policy concerns and technical issues, prepare case studies for intensive analysis of technical issues and schedule for outreach activities and publish results.

The main thrust of the workshop was on identifying potential forestry mitigation options for India under CDM, discuss the methods that need to be adopted for cabon accounting. Technical issues relevant to afforestation & reforestation projects were also disussed. To assist in the process, studies conducted in other developing countires under the FORCLIMIT project were also presented and discussed.

Discussions were held on identifying the research needs under climate change from India’s point of view and the potential areas of research cooperation by understanding the perspectives of different stakeholders.

Based on the discussions held during the workshop and recommendations, it was proposed to draft a collaborative project proposal on assessing climate change mitigation in the forestry sector at different geographic scales – National, State and District-wise case studies with the following objectives:

Objectives

1. Improved assessment of incremental mitigation opportunities and potential at national level
2. Detailed assessment of mitigation opportunities and potential costs and benefits in selected states
3. Case studies of mitigation potential, at the district scale, using parallel methods to explore mitigation opportunities and barriers, and technical issues regarding methods and institutional arrangements, to:

• assess community forestry as well as farm forestry (industry) approaches
• develop baselines
• establish additionality
• address non-permanence
• assess leakage and measures to address leakage
• suggest methods and guidelines to measure carbon stock changes, biodiversity and socio-economic impacts
• assess biodiversity and socio-economic impacts.
• estimate transaction costs of planning, administration and monitoring of projects
• consider various institutional arrangements for maximizing involvement of local stakeholders, minimizing transaction costs and maximizing flow of benefits to local stakeholders.

1. Initiate dialog by government, private, NGO, academic, and local stakeholders on technical issues and disseminate findings through workshops, meetings and publications and/or websites.